Blog - page 3

Last few weeks at the Asylum have been phenomenal. Workshops, events and hackathon in full throttle. The energy was overwhelming. We hosted the first of its kind hackathon called "Asylum Hack" in collaboration with Godrej.

It was 3 days of non-stop breaking and making consumer electronics devices.
Hackathons are great learning experience for individuals and large corporations, as they pack up so much energy and knowledge in a very short amount of time.

"Development cycles in the real world are pretty long. And to compress that into just 2 days and to tell people that here's a problem, give me a solution in 2 days. That's pretty exciting", Anool Mahidharia, Co-founder - Maker's Asylum.

Adidas Originals and Homegrown Media had organized a Launch event for Adidas's ZX Flux series of footwear and apparels. And they featutred artworks of 8 different artists. Maker's Asylum was one of them, and look what we made:

Events and workshops are the best media to share knowledge and ideas. Here's how we went about doing just that:

Bicycle Meet 101:

The agenda of this meetup was :
Agenda:
Parts of a Bike and how they affect Bike Fit
Tools/Parts to carry while Riding
Tools/Parts to have at home
Brake settings and adjustments
Drive train settings and adjustments
Removing and fitting wheels
Fixing a flat
General Maintenance and Tips
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/makersasylum/posts/1232143700145787[/embed]</p>

Sketchwalk #30:
Sunday Sketchwalk and Maker's Asylum came together to host this special event where for first time we drew from a live model Here's a glimpse:
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/makersasylum/posts/1232594940100663[/embed]</p>

Introduction to Git:
A hands on workshop to teach everyone about Git, it's advantages and it's importance in anyone's life (contrary to popular belief that it's only for IT folks).
It's a great version control tool which should be used by teams irrespective of the kind of project they're working on.
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/makersasylum/posts/1232673763426114[/embed]</p>

Cosmic Bytes: Space Mining
A discussion on the various aspects of space mining.

While arcade emulators aren’t exactly unique, they’re tons of fun, and that essentially is what drove Sehaj to build one at Maker’s Asylum Delhi.

He says the idea popped in his head on a recent trip to Mumbai, when boredom led to a friend and him to go watch Pixels.
Watching the retro-inspired imagery on screen, he decided to build an arcade emulator as soon as he got back to Delhi. Which is exactly what he did.

The heart of the machine is of course a Raspberry Pi, running an image of RetroPie. That particular combination lends great flexibility in terms of gameplay, by allowing multiple consoles to be emulated.

We used the laser cutter at the Asylum to cut the plywood that was to be the housing for the electronics. I designed the case while Utkarsh pieced it together. Meanwhile Akshay and Sehaj worked on the code, and getting the Pi to behave.

To make it look sleek, we painted the entire thing black, and added lights inside an 8-bit cutout on top. Of course you can’t have an arcade without the buttons and controllers, so we made a trip to Chandni Chowk to procure those as well.

One of the craziest weeks at the Asylum. It was loaded with action. If you weren't there, then you simply weren't there. So let me tell you what we've been upto. To start with, we spent a great afternoon hosting the members of Social Innovation Exchange Summer School 2015 at the Asylum. We got to tell them about how our open makerspace grew from Eyenetra's office with handful of people to our current massive space with one of the largest maker communities in the country and that it's been making a phenomenal social impact. They were fascinated to learn all of it. So fascinated that they got into some serious artistic action by grabbing spray cans and colouring our white walls.

Undergrad students of Industrial Design Center, IIT Bombay paid a visit to the Asylum. They were completely blown away to learn about the existence of such a makerspace. It was fun watching them go "Whoa! This is awesome" as we introduced them to our facility.

And then ofcourse the Launch and Anniversary Party happened as Maker's Asylum turned 2! It's been a crazy journey so far. So we celebrated in style. Check it out-

While we’ve been quiet for a while, it’s only because we had a killer party to celebrate Maker’s Asylum turning TWO. While Maker’s Asylum Delhi is yet to turn two, we took the opportunity to call our friends over, showcase some of what what we’ve been upto, to the sound of music and sizzle of sausages over our ninja grill. Yes that happened.

Sehaj showed up with his Kinect enabled motion emulating bot, which turned out to be quite the hit with the folks present.

Interestingly enough, despite the killer tunes being played upstairs, the ever-so-nostalgic sound of 8-bit chip tunes stayed with us through the night. Courtesy, our awesome retro emulator, which kept everyone queuing for a shot at Mario.

Ofcourse, now that we have a grill at the Asylum, no party can go without murmurs of wanting to grill. Sneha, Mira, Tanya, Abhinav & Shailendra got busy setting up a the grill and cooked us all a meal.

It was a fun night for our friends & community to come together and celebrate what we've achieved while making plans for what lies ahead. Might I also add, I'm not kidding when I say we made plans. Stay tuned as we unveil some of those soon.

So that was us celebrating. Hopefully, we’ll see YOU the next time we do!

Another exciting week at the Asylum as makers poured in to work on their ideas. With our equipments and facilities being fully operational, and with the return of our tool trainings, it's like spring time for the maker community here. Here are some updates on what we did at the space in the previous week:

Yash from our team deviced a portable hovercraft using the material from our junkyard in merely 2 hours of timespan. It's become our favourite toy lately and we just can't get enough of it. It was planned to lift heavy objects and hover it across the space from one point to another. So clearly we never did that. Instead we did this-

Do you think that a two-player chess game is too mainstream? Probably not. But Kushal thinks otherwise. So he's developed a three-player chess game. You can now play chess with two other players...for real.

We organized a laser cut lamp making workshop (Diwali edition ofcourse) for the community. And look what we made-

We also had our first 3D Printing Training session at the new Asylum. 3D Printers are quite a crowd-puller.

And now we've started our Power Tools training as well. Look how excited Ruchira is to learn the circular saw machine (Courtesy of champion carpenter Viren).